In the electronics industry, flexible substrates are quickly becoming popular as a base for electronic circuits. Flexible substrates can include a wide variety of materials including very thin layers of metal, such as stainless steel, any of a myriad of plastics, etc. Once a desired electronic component, circuit, or circuits are formed on a surface of the flexible substrate, the circuit can be attached to a final product or incorporated into a further structure. Typical examples of such products or structures are active matrices on flat panel displays, RFID tags on various commercial products in retail stores, a variety of sensors, etc.
One major problem that arises is stabilizing the flexible substrate during processing. For example, in a process of fabricating thin film transistors or thin film transistor circuits on a substrate, a large number of process steps are performed during which the substrate may be moved through several machines, ovens, cleaning steps, etc. To move a flexible substrate through such a process, the flexible substrate must be temporarily mounted in some type of carrier or a rigid carrier must be removably attached, so that the flexible carrier can be moved between process steps.
However, the relatively high coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) for flexible substrates compared to inorganic silicon or glass substrates leads to significant CTE induced strain mismatch during temperature excursions including inorganic thin film transistor (TFT) processing. This phenomenon introduces significant bowing and warping and can lead to handling errors, photolithographic alignment errors, and line/layer defects. Therefore, there exists a need in the art to develop novel compositions and methodologies for attaching a flexible substrate to a rigid carrier to mediate the preceding limitations.